When U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi issued his momentous opinion earlier this year against New Jersey’s party-line ballot design, his ruling only applied to the 2024 Democratic primary – but one South Jersey county is taking his logic further and ditching the party line on this November’s general election ballots, too.
Most New Jersey general election ballots are organized by party, with all candidates from one party appearing in a shared row or column; a drawing is conducted in each county to determine whether Democrats or Republicans get the top spot for that year. But in Cumberland County, this year’s ballots are set to use an office-block design, where all candidates are grouped by the office they’re seeking with no regard for their party.
Two other counties, Salem and Sussex Counties, already use office-block general election ballots, so there is precedent for Cumberland’s design. Salem and Sussex, however, still give top billing to either Democrats or Republicans and place the two parties in consistent positions across the ballot; Cumberland, meanwhile, appears to have given every candidate, including independents and minor-party candidates, equal opportunity to win the top spot for each office.
According to the clerk’s office’s unofficial ballot mockup, the first-listed presidential candidate will be Claudia De la Cruz, the nominee of the Socialism and Liberation Party. Democrat Kamala Harris is listed 6th, though the design of the ballot puts her directly next to De la Cruz, and Republican Donald Trump is listed 9th.
The top-listed candidate for Senate is Green Party nominee Christina Khalil, with Democrat Andy Kim in 3rd and Republican Curtis Bashaw in 5th (though that could change if incumbent Bob Menendez, listed 4th, ends his independent campaign). Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) gets the top spot for the 2nd congressional district, and Democratic County Clerk Celeste Riley is listed first in the county clerk’s race; Riley has recused herself from election matters this year, since she herself is on the ballot.
Perhaps most interestingly, the ballot order in the race for two county commissioner seats is a jumble: first Democrat Robert Austino, then incumbent Republican Joseph Sileo, then Democrat John Capizola, then Republican incumbent Antonio Romero. Voters who want to vote down the party line, which presumably will be nearly all of them, will have to work to seek out the nominees of their preferred party.
During the ballot draw conducted on August 12, Deputy County Clerk Sandra Olbrich explained that the choice to switch to office-block ballots came about “due to the large number of candidates and information on the ballot.”
“The decision was made for several reasons, but the two most significant ones were to keep the ballot to a single page, which simplifies the voting process for residents, and to ensure greater cost efficiency for taxpayers in Cumberland County,” Olbrich said.
Cumberland Republicans, for their part, are extremely displeased with the new design, writing in a letter to Riley that the office-block style violates New Jersey election laws related to the drawing of general election candidates.
“Instead of placing the names of the Republican and Democratic parties into one drawing to determine which political party receives the first ballot position, you instead placed the name of every candidate for each office to be filed into a separate drawing by office; making no distinction between candidates who were nominated in the Democratic or Republican Primary Elections and independent candidates nominated by direct petition,” GOP attorney Jason Sena wrote on behalf of Sileo, Romero, and county clerk nominee Victoria Lods. “This is a violation of the unambiguous terms of [state election law], which requires a drawing for the first columns on the General Election ballot to be done based upon political party; with the ballot order of independent candidates in the successive columns being determined by separate drawings for each office.”
Sena’s letter demands that the clerk’s office restart its ballot draw process with those state statutes in mind, threatening potential litigation if the “errors” are not corrected.
If nothing else, the county’s decision to pursue an unusual ballot design speaks to the uncertainty that county clerks have faced this year when it comes to ballot design. Quraishi’s March ruling meant that clerk’s offices had to initiate a late-in-the-game redesign of Democratic ballots (but not Republican ones) to eliminate party lines; now, those same offices have to wait for further litigation to be resolved before they can know how future ballots will look.
(The design of general election ballots was never at issue in Quraishi’s decision, so Cumberland’s decision to switch designs is a voluntary one. In fact, an amicus brief from the Middlesex County Democratic Organization opposing the ruling pointed out that other courts have previously upheld statutes allowing the two major parties to consistently get top billing in general elections – which is exactly what most New Jersey counties do.)
Clerks were also presented with the challenge of educating voters who have long been accustomed to party-line ballots. Indeed, there is evidence that certain voters were confused about the new office-block design, such as in the 8th congressional district, where some Newark residents may have voted for challenger Kyle Jasey believing that he was the party-endorsed candidate rather than Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City).
Cumberland County’s choice to opt for an office-block general election ballot will likely necessitate further education heading into November. Most voters are perfectly capable of finding their preferred candidates regardless of the ballot layout – but if, say, De la Cruz gets a disproportionate number of Cumberland votes in the presidential election compared to other counties, the new design may be a culprit.
This story was updated at 4:08 p.m. with details from the Cumberland Republicans’ letter to Riley, and again at 9:57 a.m. on August 20 with an explanation from Olbrich on why the switch was made.